City hits another snag in years-long effort to get a shoreline development plan &#8211; including sea walls &#8211; approved by the state

SOLANA BEACH 
Solana Beach officials have spent more than eight years applying to the state for local control over shoreline development – including sea walls.

No one ever expected the process to take this long, and there is still no end in sight. The city is now working on a fifth draft of its application to the California Coastal Commission.

The sea walls are an important issue in the city: 10 percent of the population lives in houses and condominiums within 20 feet of the edge of a rapidly crumbling sandstone bluff.

Since 2001, Solana Beach has submitted draft after draft of what is known as a Local Coastal Program, a set of pre-approved standards for coastal development. But city officials have yet to come up with a set of policies and procedures that the California Coastal Commission can accept.

Without a Local Coastal Program, Solana Beach has little authority over land use because the entire city is in a coastal zone. So the state Coastal Commission approves Solana Beach's development projects on a case-by-case basis and allows sea walls only in emergency situations when the bluff is in danger of collapsing.

That means headaches for property owners, who must go through both the city approval process and the cumbersome state process.

Solana Beach has been trying to get its plan approved since 2001, and last year officials submitted a fourth draft to the state Coastal Commission. As in the past, state regulators raised numerous concerns and questions about whether the plan complies with the Coastal Act.

Coastal Commission staff members requested more information on many subjects in the plan, including proposed mitigation fees for sea walls, public parking and low-cost recreational facilities, fire protection, invasive-species removal and wildlife-habitat protection.

This month, the City Council voted unanimously to withdraw the application – again – to make those revisions because of procedural deadlines. The plan will be resubmitted once it is ready.

“I think it's a minor setback,” said City Manager David Ott. “We see it as part of the process.”

For years, Solana Beach's goal of having a Local Coastal Program was held up by debate over whether to allow sea walls, which led some community members to oppose early drafts of the city's plan. Environmentalists oppose sea walls because they alter the natural terrain to protect private property. Property owners say they have a right to prevent their homes from collapsing.

After years of debate, the city in 2005 reached a compromise between environmentalists and homeowners through the work of a citizens advisory committee. Under the agreement, the Local Coastal Program rules would allow sea walls in certain cases to prevent homes from falling down the bluffs, but would impose restrictions to limit sea walls' use. Its stated goals include “preserving and enhancing a safe, wide beachfront for use by the public” and “protecting property rights.”

The city revised its Local Coastal Program dramatically to incorporate the compromise. The plan now has broad community support.

New sea walls would have to be as small as possible and designed to be removed in the future. Property owners would have to agree to several conditions, including paying fees for sand replenishment and fees so the city could buy some bluff-top property for the purpose of demolishing sea walls. Solana Beach would have the first right to purchase any bluff-top property for sale. The policy would require sea walls to be removed by 2081.